Flags

[Torco]

i don't get it
what makes it difficult to draw

try it. contouring it, of course, not drawing a couple of squares.

[Pthagnar]

i did!
it doesn't seem terribly hard

it's not terribly pretty, but that's the point of freehand drawing -- it is still plenty recognisable as an 8 pointed star

[Torco]

i did!
it doesn't seem terribly hard

it's not terribly pretty,

the question is: is it terribly recognizable as an 8-pointed star ?

[Trailsend]

Yeah, 8-point stars are definitely not too hard to draw. Certainly easier than the US's 5-point stars, because of the 45-degree angles.

I submit empirical evidence:

An 8-point star, drawn freehand using a laptop trackpad.

[Pthagnar]

well it is recognisably a star and it has eight points

here i'll do one in paint

One where I drew one half and flipped it:


fully freehand:


with the squares method:

[Skomakar'n]

Freehand using a touchpad:

[Torco]

just tried

you know what? you guys are right. it's not that hard.

[Curan Roshac]

Pthug should get credit for pointing this one out.

[the duke of nuke]

It's not hard to draw. I mean, if it were, people would start complaining about the Israeli flag (which is rather pleasing aesthetically) because of the Star of David.

Velkas, that's a very nice flag. My only suggestion is that the gold areas look rather saturated, which is to say bit greyish. Good design overall.
And welcome to the board

[benadam]

It's not hard to draw. I mean, if it were, people would start complaining about the Israeli flag (which is rather pleasing aesthetically) because of the Star of David.

Disagree! If I was drawing both these flags -- Israeli and Velkas' -- freehand, I would find the Israeli flag much easier, because it is two triangles overlapping. Velkas', on the other hand, is not simply two squares overlapping -- it is a sixteen-sided shape, which is much more tricky do draw convincingly (although not impossibly so, as has been shown a number of times now).

[Viktor77]

Why are you guys using the paint bursh tool in MS Paint? Haven't you heard of the line tool, it's so much easier to use, especially while pressing shift.

[the duke of nuke]

The whole point of all the preceding drawings was to show how easy it is to draw an eight-pointed star freehand.

Also what's with you and MS Paint? Get GIMP, or Photoshop if you know the right people. Paint.net is also reputed to be good.

[Viktor77]

The whole point of all the preceding drawings was to show how easy it is to draw an eight-pointed star freehand.

Also what's with you and MS Paint? Get GIMP, or Photoshop if you know the right people. Paint.net is also reputed to be good.

I can't stand those programs, too many options. Like Roller Coaster Tycoon, I like using nothing for tools to create incredible works.

BTW I realise the idea was to draw freehand but most people would draw on a sheet of paper a star more similar to one drawn using the line tool than the paint brush tool simply because we are less coordinated drawing freehand with a mouse.

[con quesa]

I have a problem with Dewrad's criticism of peoples' flags, namely that there are lots of real world countries that have ugly or complicated flags (by the standards of that website he linked anyway). If a real world country has an ugly flag because of some reason, why might a country in a constructed world not have an equally ugly flag for an analogous reason? From the perspective of conworlding, the more interesting piece of creative work isn't the flag itself, but the constructed historical process of how that flag came about.

Which leads into the question of why is it that countries have flags to begin with? European countries have flags because they came out of the heraldic tradition, and the designs on them are in turn based on the traditions of heraldry. But what about non-European countries? Did, say, China or Bactria or Egypt have flags before extensive European contact?

In my own conworld, I don't picture the Saimi as having a flag at all. They were originally seminomads who lacked a tradition of banners, except for the very pragmatic purpose of communication during battle, and it didn't occur to them to put their symbols on a flag. The agricultural nations that they conquered didn't use flags for that purpose either, but did make use of circular carved bronze discs for symbolic purposes. So when the Saimi coalesced as a nation what they considered to be their national symbol ended up being an intricately-carved bronze disc with all sorts of writing on it. It looked a bit like an Aztec calendar, and one of these days I'll up and design the thing.

The western barbarians did have flags which they used for symbols of their tribal groups (generally either perfect squares or long, narrow banners, nothing like the roughly 1:2 flag that most modern Earth nations seem to use), but that was just incentive for the Saimi and its descendant cultures to not do that, because the barbarians did. The settled Saimi stuck to metal discs.

Edit: I also want to note that I completely disagree with the site Dewrad linked about the Colorado flag. I think it's ugly as sin. The "C" in the middle of it is a detriment, not a positive.

[benadam]

Well, here's a flag I designed yesterday, just for the sake of making a cool design. Purely æsthetic. But I could always make up symbolism for it, no?


I reckon the red could be an important letter (like a Z with a diagonal line through it), or something? First letter of the kingdom's name?

[Dewrad]

Argh, my eyes!

[Christopher Schröder]

The red-on-green produces a singularly painful effect, and the design itself is incredibly strange, and, in its strangeness, seems rather unsuitable for a flag.

[Hakaku]

Pro-tip: Never save in .jpg unless it's a very detailed image or photo. Use .png for all around purposes. And if you have a decent program for it, use .gif for simple color images.

[MrKrov]

Disagree! If I was drawing both these flags -- Israeli and Velkas' -- freehand, I would find the Israeli flag much easier, because it is two triangles overlapping. Velkas', on the other hand, is not simply two squares overlapping -- it is a sixteen-sided shape, which is much more tricky do draw convincingly (although not impossibly so, as has been shown a number of times now).

The number of sides doesn't keep it from being a mere overlap of two squares. Also, the Israeli flag has a paltry four sides less, which isn't exactly significantly lower.

[Viktor77]

Never use all thin lines on a flag. A flag is not a barcode or in this case, those silly shape drawings you did in 5th grade on MS Paint when you were bored.

[Torco]

It will haunt my dreams, methinks

[Lyhoko Leaci]

Disagree! If I was drawing both these flags -- Israeli and Velkas' -- freehand, I would find the Israeli flag much easier, because it is two triangles overlapping. Velkas', on the other hand, is not simply two squares overlapping -- it is a sixteen-sided shape, which is much more tricky do draw convincingly (although not impossibly so, as has been shown a number of times now).

The number of sides doesn't keep it from being a mere overlap of two squares. Also, the Israeli flag has a paltry four sides less, which isn't exactly significantly lower.

But unlike the Israeli flag, only the lines on the outside of the 8 pointed star design are visible, so it requires erasing if you draw from two overlapping squares.

[MrKrov]

And you need to draw the internal lines to give it the shape of overlapping squares why?

[Christopher Schröder]

Interesting pattern!

It's Ukraine's coat of arms. I put it up because dewrad was getting anoyed at people for copying other country's flag and so on.

Btw, Its called the Trezub(Трезуб) which means 'three tooth'

That actually looks awesome... like a swan or a spacecraft... go ukraine

I saw something more like a sword and a crown merged together, though it is still one of the nicest coats-of-arms I have ever seen.

[maıráí]

Here is the wartime flag for the Kata Ku country, Hano:
(They hang flags from the top in Kata Ku, instead of holding the right side and letting the left fall like we do. What bad form!)

The darker, duller colors keep with Ku aesthetics. The red, at the top of the flag, symbolizes the war, and especially Hano's supremacy and inevitable victory.
The greens are on all Hano flags. The lighter green has the additional meaning here of peace under Hano rule. The darker can also be likened to areas not yet conquered. (But, being on the flag, are seen as Hano's land anyways.)
The black is a shortened form of the words "fire" and "people". Something like the "Moi Ku" emblem I stuck on all my passport pages. It's a little uneccessary here (there's no other country with those colors, but, hey, why not emphasize how great everything Hano is, anyways?)

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That Ukranian flag is cool. o_o I normally dislike colors like that, but it works nicely there.